Ikki the Shard Grafter

Lore
Ikki was awakened into the corpse of Queen Deborah, a beloved human monarch who died centuries ago. The necrotic soon developed an affinity for moving between shadows and poisoning the tips of her daggers, so that any lunging stab from the shadows would prove fatal to her prey, regardless of whether she pierced a vital organ.

Nobody knows what the typical lifespan of a necrotic is, not even the necrotic themselves. Awakening new necrotic by placing diamond gems into the eye sockets of human corpses slows down the decaying process significantly, but does not halt it. Eventually, when necrotic are slain in battle or their bodies become too decomposed over time to remain useful, the diamond gems are implanted into a new corpse and re-awakened. When this occurs, the “new” necrotic typically takes a unique name and often assumes new personality traits that can range from subtle quirks to an entirely different persona.

Ikki refuses to accept the inevitable. She believes that if a pair of Hexing gems can halt the decomposition of a necrotic’s physical form, then perhaps a multitude of these gems grafted directly into the skin can imbue something approaching immortality. Her fellow necrotic do not understand her obsession with the preservation of her individual form, for all of their kind are fragments of a single intellect, and the bodies they inhabit are mere vessels that give mobility to their consciousness. When one form withers, they merely take another and move forward.

Ikki believes that dismissing the usefulness of the physical form is a mistake. She feels that if the necrotic were to coalesce their intelligence into a small cluster of immortal physical forms impervious to damage, decay, or destruction, it would be a more efficient use of resources than spreading themselves thin across a wider legion of diverse but frail remains of former human bodies. So, she fervently experiments with her own form, grafting various combinations of Hexing gems into her body in an attempt to find the flawless arrangement that will grant her immortality.